Things are stable for your chapter. Your board and your committees are passionate, and they are trying to get all of the work done. Word is getting out and people are showing up to events and joining.

Most of the time.

Board members feel there aren’t as many people attending meetings and events as in the past. A lot of the attendees are regulars and there have only been a few guests; numbers indicate membership has dropped in the past year. Of the guests who attend, several have said it’s a challenge to find out about upcoming events, and when they do, they don’t have enough time to plan to attend those they’re interested in.

Are these obstacles an expectation of running a chapter, or are they something else, something that could be fixed?

How many different activities are involved in running your chapter, and how many systems do you use to manage them?

Having a large number of processes performed by multiple people on numerous systems can lead to:

Confusing or outdated information on your website

Repetitive time-consuming work for your board and volunteers

Delayed communications

These issues are frustrating to your base. Some members are not renewing, and some guests are deciding the challenges are not worth their time, so they’re getting their needs met elsewhere.

An Association Management System (AMS) allows you to update and streamline your chapter’s processes while decreasing the amount of manual work involved, the number of people required, and the time you spend. All of these improvements can send your chapter in the positive direction you need.

Why Move to an AMS?

You probably use a number of programs to manage all the tasks required to run your chapter. You don’t have to, as all of it can be done through a single AMS.

“Why should we change,” you’re wondering, “when things are ‘ok,’ and we’re comfortable with what we’re using?”

Is it hard to find enough volunteers? Are they and the processes easy to manage? Who taught them how to use the systems, and whom do you call when you have questions? These time- and labor-intensive activities put a drain on all involved. You might think you’re comfortable, but if you look at the time you’re spending, and the frustration experienced by your volunteers, members, and guests, you get a different picture.

The Value of AMS

AMS can improve the ways you manage things like your:

Chapter website: Get the most out of it, rather than the minimum. An AMS lets you easily keep your website and your calendar up-to-date, driving traffic to the website, and keeping members informed.

Event registration: Boost attendance and bring in additional revenue, when you make it simple for members and guests to register online and pay the appropriate ticket prices.

Emails: Ensure your design and content work together to engage readers and get them to open your communications and act on what they read.

Membership: Track your members and guests, for a clear picture of who they are and what they need.

Board: Give your board the details they need to understand the chapter and their roles in it. Maintaining all of this information in one place makes it easier for those who comes on board next.

Instead of managing countless people and systems, you spend your time with one system, being more productive and getting better results.

“The site seems to be increasing our ‘reach’ in unprecedented ways,” says Terry Goode, president of the Association of Fundraising Professionals, East Central Illinois Chapter. Her board has been using the StarChapter AMS platform for only a few months. “Recently, I had three email requests from organizations outside our chapter area, and one was in another state. We had several people attend our monthly luncheon last Friday that haven't attended a monthly event in the past two years.”

An AMS can provide everything you need to better manage your chapter, freeing you and your volunteers to focus on those things that got you involved in the first place – advocacy, networking, friendship, career advancement – instead of struggling to get it all done.